O.C.'s 'Housewives' still keeping it 'Real'

Gretchen Rossi has some advice for anyone planning on pursuing reality stardom:

Think twice.

The fame and fortune that come with the job are accompanied by plenty of pain and discomfort.

"You have to have really thick skin," Rossi said. "This kind of fame is very fleeting. At the end of the day, all you have left is your reputation and your character."

Few people know better than Rossi, who has been sharing her personal life with America for five years as one of "The Real Housewives of Orange County."

"RHOC," as fans know it, aired its 100th episode Monday night on Bravo, a celebration of eight years of baring the personal lives of a group of well-to-do South County women.

What began in 2006 as a real-life take on the then-popular "Desperate Housewives" has grown into an entire subset of reality programming. There are now six other "Real Housewives" series and many more similar shows in the "ensemble lifestyle" genre.

Eight seasons in, the original continues to be a staple of Bravo's lineup, pulling in about 2 million viewers an episode, with an audience heavy on young women.

"('RHOC') has been a huge, overwhelming success for Bravo," said Shari Levine, head of the network's current programming. "It has become a pop-culture sensation."

The secret to that long-term success, says executive producer Doug Ross, is the show's commitment to honesty.

"A lot of times the viewers think the show must be scripted," Ross said. "It's 100 percent real."

"RHOC" was conceived by TV producer Scott Dunlop, a Coto de Caza resident who thought he could build an interesting show about the lives of women inside a gated community. So he shot and edited a demo episode and brought it to Bravo.

The network liked it, and the timing seemed right; not only was "Desperate Housewives" popular, but "The O.C." and "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" had made the county a hot TV property.

After Season 1, Bravo brought in Ross, who had helped launch the U.S. version of "Big Brother," to tweak the show's format.

In the seasons since, "RHOC" has hewed to the same formula, although the stories have changed as the Housewives have come and gone. There have been 13 Housewives in all, and only Vicki Gunvalson has remained the entire time.

"Early on, there was more of a focus on the family relationships," Ross said. "Now the emphasis is on the women's interactions with each other."

Even though most of the Housewives now live outside Coto de Caza, the producers have insisted that any new cast members be part of the same wide circle of friends, which is a key element of the ensemble-lifestyle genre.

"We look at a group of friends who are part of a subculture, and it's fascinating," Levine said.

Rossi, herself, was recruited at a dinner party by departing Housewife Jo De La Rosa and her boyfriend, Slade Smiley. (Coincidentally, Smiley is now Rossi's fiancé.)

"I said, 'Oh, no way, I'm not doing that,'" Rossi recalled. She didn't take the pitch seriously that night, but the next morning a casting director called.

"I really didn't know what to expect," Rossi said of joining the show. "It looked like a bowl of cherries from the outside."

She wasn't prepared for the cattiness or the conflict that makes up the soul of the show, although now she appreciates its importance.

Rossi said that by and large, the cast members get along, but when they do fight, they know it's going to be on the show.

"We all understand the TV business," she said. "Unfortunately, with these types of shows, this is what the audience is looking for."

Even if the conflict is distilled for television, Rossi said, it's always authentic.

"Our show is not scripted one bit. It's exactly what is happening in our lives.

"There is a level of authenticity that is expected of us on this show. There are times when I look at myself, and I say, 'Wow.' But that's life, and nobody goes through life and is perfect."

Many of the Housewives have faced larger issues on the show, divorces and money problems chief among them. Executive producer Ross notes that "RHOC" has never flinched from these potentially embarrassing struggles for the cast members.

"We want to tell the honest story, but we want to do it in a way that is sensitive," Ross said. "The audience is very willing to forgive if they feel like they're seeing the real story. If you want them to go along with you, tell them the truth.

"Thank goodness (the Housewives) have been brave."

Ross said he was particularly proud of how the former cast members who participated in the 100th episode unanimously agreed that their onscreen stories, while sometimes uncomfortable, were always accurate.

He credits the show's continued success in part to that honesty and to the producers' refusal to script situations for its stars.

Despite the ad-lib dialogue, "RHOC" is highly structured in its presentation.

"We've developed a storytelling style that harks back to classic daytime and prime-time soap operas," Ross said. "It's become an addictive guilty pleasure."

Brandy Monk-Payton, a media scholar at Brown University, agrees.

"This is part of the pleasure of watching, to witness excessive behavior and watch cast members completely unravel when confronted with conflict," Monk-Payton said. "Even while many of the tense altercations and heightened moments of emotion are constructed for controversy, they still produce a bond between the characters, as well as the characters and the viewers, that shouldn't be written off as mere mindless entertainment."

Constructing an "RHOC" season is a difficult task. The shooting lasts 3½ to five months. All that time, video is being sent back to the production facility in Burbank, where editors and producers begin sifting through and extracting the story lines that will eventually be edited into the season's episodes. Thousands of hours of shooting are distilled into maybe the dozen hours that we see.

It's tough on the cast members, too.

"It's such a love/hate relationship for me," Rossi said. "I am so grateful to Bravo ... but there is a piece of me that struggles with how draining it is."

She would one day like to move on to another job in TV, hosting a fashion-and-beauty show, perhaps. But she'll stick with "RHOC" for a while.

"I think it would be great to be a Real Housewife at 80," she says, laughing.

'REAL HOUSEWIVES' SEASON-BY-SEASON RECAP

(The official count to the "100th episode" does not include the reunions and "lost footage" specials, but they are included here.)

4 – The season expands to 15 episodes. Lauri leaves after four installments. A long-running feud between Tamra and new Housewife Gretchen Rossi begins. At the reunion episode, it is revealed that Gretchen's fiancé, Jeff Beitzel, has died from leukemia. Housewives: Vicki, Jeana, Lauri (now Lauri Peterson), Tamra, Gretchen, Lynne Curtin.

5 – The length of the seasons continues to expand, to 17. Jo's and Lauri's ex, Slade Smiley, returns as Gretchen's boyfriend. A trip to Florida starts to put long-term cracks in Vicki's relationship with the rest of the cast. Lynne's family gets evicted. Housewives: Vicki, Jeana, Tamra, Gretchen, Lynne, Alexis Bellino.